In a word, the new China that we shall sooner or later have to deal with among the nations of the world is the new China that the ports are helping to make--for this new China is to-day in process of development. She is struggling heroically to digest and assimilate the Western ideas which alone can bring life and vigour to the sluggish Chinese mass. And yet, turning westward for aid, China is confronted with--Shanghai, Tientsin, and Hongkong. Turning to Britain for a helping hand in her effort to check the inroads of opium, she hears this cheerful doctrine from the one British colony which China can really see and partly understand, Hongkong--"It is up to China." Dr. Morrison has stated in one of his letters to the _Times_ that Britain's attitude towards China is one of sympathy, tempered by a lack of information. One very eminent British diplomat with whom I discussed the opium question assured me that that attitude of his government was "most sympathetic." Later, in London, I found that this same government was quieting an aroused public opinion with assurances that steps were being taken towards an agreement with China in the matter of opium. All this was in the spring and summer of 1907. Six months later, the one British colony in China, and the two great international ports, were cheerfully continuing their cynical policy of sneering at or ignoring the attempts of the Chinese to overcome their master-vice, and were cheerfully profiting by the situation. It would perhaps seem fanciful to suggest that the great nations should unite to regulate the coast ports. It would appear obvious that such regulation, in so far as it might create a better understanding between the Chinese and the representatives of foreign civilizations with whom they must come in contact, would work to the advantage of commercial interests. Anti-foreign riots are in progress to-day in China which have their roots partly in racial misconception, partly in a long tradition of injustice and bad faith; and it is hardly necessary to suggest that an atmosphere of injustice, bad faith, and rioting is not the best atmosphere in which to carry on trade. But, nevertheless, the inevitable difficulties in the way of drawing the great nations together in the interests of a better understanding with the Chinese people would seem to make such a solution academic rather than practical.